Will Shetterly Quotes

The abolitionists were not like the rugged people out West, and they were not like John Brown, either. They were people who made speeches and did politics.

When things happen socially in our community, as artists, we've got the right to exercise our voices if we choose to, use our powers for good.

I'm not any kind of social reformer.

I was always interested in social change but never actually did anything about it.

Change America—Change the World

Ultimately, change will happen when problems persist and enough people are concerned.

Everything I do is political.

When I think of an activist, I think of a community organizer who is working every day and directly with community members and making it a job to take care of and speak up for a community in some way.

My mother informed me that the way to be a change agent to create change, the first line of defense, or however you want to phrase that, is politics and government.

I have said it before and I will continue to say that I don't think art is the most effective form of protest. I don't think it changes policy; I think it changes discourse, and discourse can change ideas, and for me, that's what it's about: having that space for conversation.

I think it's important that artists use their voices for so much more than just their talent.

I consider myself an activist who governs.

I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.

I'd already been doing work in the community... But when it comes to how to actually amplify your voice, when I saw what Colin Kaepernick did and the amount of coverage and conversation around it, that's when I truly realized how much influence we have as athletes.

The goal is to talk about the issues that are happening in this country with the ultimate goal of making change.

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

I am a correctionist. If something is wrong in society, it must be fixed. At least one should try to fix it.

You can positively affect and change a social circumstance with art, and it’s vital that a change happens now.

It is important to keep protesting, to keep forcing a conversation in the public arena. In any case, when you know what the right thing to do is, or that something must be said, it can be immoral and dangerous not to act.

I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change. I am far lazier than that.

My parents were always philosophizing about how to bring about change. To me, people who didn't try to make the world a better place were strange.

In a democratic society, as Max Weber said, what is possible is only possible because some people have demanded the impossible. The abolitionists helped to create a public discourse in which men like Lincoln become possible. That doesn't mean Lincoln is an abolitionist. It means there is a public opinion out there which is being influenced by antislavery sentiment.

As Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist, said: "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will." You need the truth, and you also need a demand, and you need to bring that demand into the realm of electoral politics. If you don't do that, it's very hard to get such an entrenched machine to move.

What most of us must be involved in--whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world.

We must fight all that we dislike in public life. We must substitute better ideas for wrong ideas.